If you are a beef / sheep / chicken farmer, are you noticing a fall in demand?

[anotherotherone]

I was just travelling back down to London by train and there seem to be a lot less sheep and cows in the fields than normal. Am I imagining things?

There are so many meat / dairy alternatives in the shops now. AIBU to think (well, hope) that as people are eating less meat these days and this trend looks set to continue,
are farmers reacting by reducing their stocks?

What i don't get is why do meat replacements call themselves bacon , sausages , burgers etc as there not

@worriedatthistime

What i don't get is why do meat replacements call themselves bacon , sausages , burgers etc as there not

Because most veggies were brought up as meat eaters, it can take time to come away from it, so it can make it easier to have foods which look/taste/named similar. I've noticed a lot of veggies come away from these meat lookalikes after they have been veggie a bit longer, some don't though.

A little bit like those who are reducing/cutting out alcohol by drinking alcohol free beers.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I don't follow this argument closely but I have the impression that many UK evangelical vegans and vegetarians have been heavily influenced by horror stories about from other parts of the world and not specific issues with UK agriculture.

The UK has many mega livestock farms where animals have horrendous living conditions don’t get to see the light of day.

It’s funny how people get so angry at animal cruelty but turn a blind eye to this.

If you like animals and eat meat then you are a hypocrite.

@Fixyourself if you love animals and eat any mass produced food - you are a hypocrite. Animals have died and been used in production for every, single bit of food you eat, whether it’s got meat in or not. Don’t eat animals, nobody cares but don’t pretend that animals aren’t being used and killed every single day so you can eat.

@worriedatthistime

What i don't get is why do meat replacements call themselves bacon , sausages , burgers etc as there not

I'm assuming it's because they try to replicate the taste? Not all vegetarians dislike the taste, they just don't want to eat animals. I don't eat fake meat as I eat meat, I love veggie and vegan dishes and cook/eat them often but I use actual vegetables.

@Mangogogogo

And honestly I don’t know anyone in my everyday not internet life that is newly vegetarian. I know one veggie and she has been since I met her at school

In my experience more people are becoming vegetarian, people I would never have expected to either.

My previously non meat eating DS has gone back to eating meat.

I like animals, but I also like bacon.

The only meat alternative, that I’ve tasted , that tastes anything like the original is Linda McCartney’s duck.

Just looking out of my kitchen window and deciding who is going to be Sunday lunch, one of the chickens or one of the ducks.

Veggie-not-vegan starts innocent thread about cute animals in fields to call all meat eaters horrible, say that meat smells, and consuming dairy is weird.

If you went veggie when you were 12, was this last week? Because it just seems like a lot of playground name calling and teenage moral superiority.

My local butchers is amazing and we now get all our meat from there. It doesn't smell at all?! Like at all. Yes it's a bit more expensive but we are happy to pay.

I love farmers and farming and watch every programme about them on the TV.

We still have a lot of our cattle in sheds right now. They do not eat much meal, we have excellent grass and make the best use possible of silage and zero grazing. They will then graze over summer out in the fields.

Last lot we sent to the factory said they can't keep up with demand. I also buy all our meat from the local butcher as it seems does everyone else in town.

Based on environmental issues, I'd expect there is a long term trajectory that would result in less meat and dairy consumption in the western world. But that could be counteracted by increased consumption in the developing world.

My cousin is a dairy farmer, and they've had very very good times these past few years.

@Thebestwaytoscareatory so the summary is - you don’t know anything about farming? This is why these threads are tedious, you get people who don’t know anything about it regurgitating random statistics they’ve googled with no way to apply them. Carbon emissions are just part of a small story and talking about farming 20,000 years ago is a pointless waste of time.

If you remove livestock you will have to try and farm they Grade 3/4/5 land they graze, releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Most land is Grade 3 - you can grow some arable crops on some of it, but it’s better for grass.

All farming now is reasonably intensive. It has to be to support billions of people. If you take away livestock, soil health and fertility will decline meaning yields drop. You quickly won’t have enough food to go around, you could use chemical inputs but they are dreadful for the environment. Those 4% of wild mammals you talk of (livestock does graze?) aren’t going to be able to fertilise everything and keep up the soil health. I’m sure it will be enjoyable though when everybody starts to starve because there are no nutrients left in the ground, it’s rife with disease and pests and we’ve sprayed so much pesticide and artificial fertiliser that we’ve killed off everything else. Or we could use livestock in an arable rotation to restore fertility, improve soil health, reduce pests and disease and feed people.

I never claimed to be an expert on farming. You are the one who tried to link farming to the carbon cycle and implied there was a beneficial relationship between the two. My entire post was about dispelling that notion and highlighting that agriculture and in particular animal agriculture is just another man made activity that, in its current form, has a massively negative impact on the environment and climate.

Why you've now moved on to soil health and land productivity is beyond me as that is a completely different issue. I'm well aware of the issues surrounding land use and maintaining a stable supply of foods. However, continuing with our current systems will result in a catastrophic ecological collapse and the displacement and/or death of billions. If we are to survive our entire way of living and consuming has to change.

Am I imagining things?

Malnourishment can cause hallucinations...

For those wondering what should happen to land unsuitable for arable farming should it not be grazed, by animals: it would go wild again. First scrub, succeeded eventually by trees. Y'know, those trees, that we're supposed to have more of. Full of wildlife, that we're supposed to have more of. It wouldn't matter, given the bigger picture of food production, because animal agriculture is a massively inefficient way of producing calories. Take all the land dedicated to growing food for animals and use it to grow food for humans, and there we are.

Obviously, livestock farmers are going to kick off about this, because it means the end of their livelihoods. And I would have a lot of sympathy for them if they weren't constantly, energetically coming out with arguments that are demonstrably untrue, illogical and in absolute denial of the science as it stands, in order to defend their position.

@Thebestwaytoscareatory they are linked - part of the carbon cycle is waste products and decomposing animals sequestering carbon. Those waste products also improve soil health and fertility.

Bizarrely, it seems like you are agreeing with me. We can’t carry on with intensive farming so rotational farming using livestock is the environmentally sound way to go.

However, continuing with our current systems will result in a catastrophic ecological collapse and the displacement and/or death of billions. If we are to survive our entire way of living and consuming has to change.

Is that so bad? That's what nature does, if a species needs more resources than are available then it begins to die out. Your point is loaded in that you seem to think humans are a special case compared to other species. We're not, the same rules apply. If we die out we'll deserve to. But that really isn't an immediate worry, it will be decades before there are serious problems and most of us will be dead before then.

Try to live life one day at a time.

I bloody love the smell of the butchers, I imagine like a zombie drawn to brains 🧟‍♂️
Also there is NO better smell in the word than meat cooking on a bbq 🤤
It’s a natural urge I reckon

Was there not supposedly some policy of subsidies for farmers who would leave sections of their land alone and let it rewild? Is that actually happening?

The most tragic part of this Anthropocene that’s now upon us is when people seem unable to even conceive of land unless it is interfered with for human use. If animals aren’t being killed on our roads, they are being reared for mass slaughter. There are so few places left for them to just exist without being ‘managed.’ Truly depressing.

There is supposed to be a programme of subsidies for rewilding/ custodianship of land. Last I heard it was half written, vague and all over the place. So farmers don't know whether they're coming or going.

@crackofdoom you cannot just take all of the land that animal feed is grown on and grow carrots. It just doesn’t work like that. That’s why animal agriculture works, you are turning foods with low nutritional value like feed wheat and stubble turnips into high quality protein.

@crackofdoom

For those wondering what should happen to land unsuitable for arable farming should it not be grazed, by animals: it would go wild again. First scrub, succeeded eventually by trees. Y'know, those trees, that we're supposed to have more of. Full of wildlife, that we're supposed to have more of. It wouldn't matter, given the bigger picture of food production, because animal agriculture is a massively inefficient way of producing calories. Take all the land dedicated to growing food for animals and use it to grow food for humans, and there we are.

Obviously, livestock farmers are going to kick off about this, because it means the end of their livelihoods. And I would have a lot of sympathy for them if they weren't constantly, energetically coming out with arguments that are demonstrably untrue, illogical and in absolute denial of the science as it stands, in order to defend their position.

Lots of places that have tried rewilding over the last few decades have reintroduced livestock grazing because what has actually happened is we have created scrubby waste lands where not much actually lives.

Without livestock dung and grazing there isn't the much to feed the insects. There aren't the insects to feed the small birds. The grasses become too long/matted for ground nesting birds to live in and other small birds to forage in the ground. Small mammals cant easily graze the tough and bitter grass. Watercourses become overgrown and harder to access.

Without the smaller mammals and birds larger predators move on.

We can't just pretend that 100s of years of farming and agriculture can be reversed.

My farm is full of wildlife unlike the local RSPB owned land nearby which has been left to go to waste and is a strangely silent place to go for a walk. The only birds there are crows and buzzards nesting in the trees, everything else has left.

elbea I really don't see why you can't grow eg beans anywhere that you grow turnips. Brassicas are pretty picky.